pd08my95 Digest of Other White House Announcements...

	Web GovRecords.org

Oklahoma City, to update our country on how the families who have 
suffered so much are rebuilding their lives, and to remind us about the 
countless heroes we have all seen there. The terrible people who did 
this thing do not deserve to be celebrities, although they will become 
famous. But the victims and their families and the people who have 
labored, they don't deserve to be forgotten.
    The heroes of this tragedy embody the unbreakable spirit of our 
Nation. They should always be remembered, the hundreds of rescue workers 
who defied the rain, the cold, the heartache, and a very real risk to 
their own lives. People like Rebecca Anderson, a nurse with four 
children, whose parents still live in my home State, who was hit by a 
piece of concrete and later died trying to help others. Even in death 
she continued to serve the living by giving her heart to save the life 
of a man from Oklahoma, and one of her kidneys to save the life of a 
woman from New Mexico.
    Now, folks, that is the real America. Sometimes all of us forget it 
a little bit. Sometimes all of us are too bound up in what we are doing. 
But this country is bound together in a way that the people like those 
who committed those crimes in Oklahoma can never understand. And I know 
our Government is not perfect, and I know it makes mistakes. But this is 
a very free country and a very great country. And a lot of the people 
who are out there complaining about it today would not even be able to 
do what they do in the way they do it in most of the other democracies 
in the world today. And we should never forget it.
    I say this tonight not to pour cold water on this wonderful evening 
and not because I haven't enjoyed it--I think I laughed harder tonight 
than anybody else here--but because as long as this work is going on, I 
think I owe it to you to tell you for all of our sometimes conflicting 
interests, I am really proud of the work the American press corps did in 
bringing this to the American people. And the work is not over. The 
understanding is not over.
    We have a lot of difficult decisions to make in the weeks and months 
ahead. As you know, I feel very strongly that the country should adopt 
stronger measures against terrorism. It will be debated in the Congress. 
Some of the measures are complex. You will have to explain them to the 
American people. I ask only that in all of this, you never forget the 
human dimension that you have so skillfully and heroically brought home 
to all the people of this country.
    We are going to get through this, and when we do, we'll be even 
stronger. We've been around here now for more than 200 years because 
almost all the time more than half of us wind up somehow doing the right 
thing. And we will do the right thing again.
    I'd like to close with words written by the wonderful poet, W.H. 
Auden, over 50 years ago, ``In the deserts of the heart, let the healing 
fountain start. In the prison of his days, teach the free man how to 
praise.''
    We praise America tonight, and we thank you for bringing it home to 
us in such a powerful way in these last days.
    Good night, and God bless you all.

Note: The President spoke at 10:47 p.m. at the Washington Hilton. In his 
remarks, he referred to Ken Walsh, outgoing president, White House 
Correspondents Association, and entertainer Conan O'Brien.


<DOC>
[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents]
 [frwais.access.gpo.gov]


[Page 737-739]
 
Monday, May 8, 1995
 
Volume 31--Number 18
Pages 735-776
 
Week Ending Friday, May 5, 1995
 
Remarks to the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors in New 
York City

April 30, 1995

    Foreign Minister Peres, thank you for your powerful words, the 
example of your life, and your tireless work for peace. Rabbi Lau, 
Governor Pataki, Senator Moynihan, Senator D'Amato, members of the New 
York congressional delegation, Speaker Silver, Ambassador Rabinovich and 
members of the Diplomatic Corps, Mr. Mayor--and of course, my

[[Page 738]]

friend Benjamin Meed. I thank you and your wife for joining us and 
helping Hillary and me and, through us, the entire United States last 
year to understand the deepest and profoundest meaning of the Warsaw 
Uprising.
    This year we mark the 50th anniversary of the end of the Holocaust. 
Since Biblical times, 50th anniversaries have had special meanings. Our 
English word ``jubilee'' comes to us from the Hebrew word for that 
anniversary. And the Scripture tells us that every 50th year is to be 
holy and the land should be left fallow and slaves freed upon the 
blowing of a shofar. It was a year in the Scriptures that closed an era 
and began another.
    We think of such things here on the end of this century and the 
beginning of a new millennium, but in profound ways there can be no such 
closure for the half-century after the Holocaust. For all of those who 
lived through it and all of us who came after, the Holocaust redefined 
our understanding of the human capacity for evil. Anyone who has stood 
in that tower of photographs in the Holocaust Memorial Museum in 
Washington, who has seen those unforgettable, warm, expressive faces 
from that small Lithuanian town, anyone who has seen the horror even in 
pictures knows that we must now and never allow the memory of those 
events to fade.
    The Bible also made the link between memory and deed, enjoining us 
so often to remember the years of slavery in Egypt and the acts of the 
wicked and then to act morally. Today we must remember those years of 
radical evil as though it were a commandment to do so because, as we 
have seen, hatred still flourishes where it has a chance. Intolerance 
still lurks, waiting to spread. Racist violence still threatens abroad 
and at home.
    We are taught in our faith that as much as we might regret it, deep 
within the human spirit there is, and will always remain until the end 
of time, the capacity for evil. It must be remembered, and it must be 
opposed.
    The commandment to remember is especially great now because, as the 
Foreign Minister said, this has been a very bloody century. And soon, 
the living memory of the Holocaust will pass. Those of us, then, who 
were born after the war will then have to shoulder the responsibility 
that the survivors have carried for so long: to fight all forms of 
racism, to combat those who distort the past and peddle hate in the 
present, to stand against the new forms of organized evil and counter 
their determination to use and to abuse the modern miracles of 
technology and openness and possibility that offer us the opportunity to 
build for our children the most remarkable world ever known but still 
carry, within these forces, the seeds of further destruction.
    I have hope for the future because our Americans are embracing the 
responsibility of memory. In the 2 years since the Holocaust Memorial 
Museum opened, more than 4 million people--more, many more than were 
expected--have visited that remarkable place. The daily number of 
visitors is still increasing, and about 8 of every 10 Americans who 
visit are not Jews. Twenty thousand school groups have been there 
already, and with the help of the museum, some 40,000 teachers around 
our country now teach about the Holocaust in their classes. Perhaps 
those children one day will be the kind of adults who would stop and ask 
why and do more if someone ever came to take a friend or a neighbor 
away.
    If so, we will have been true to the memory of the victims of the 
Holocaust, and we will have pressed the cause of decency and human 
dignity yet one more step forward. This is our task: making memory real 
and making memory a guide for our own actions.
    I am reminded of the extraordinary visit I had last year to the Old 
Jewish Cemetery in Prague, that great forest of stones. As you know, 
everyone who visits there, or any Jewish cemetery, puts a stone on a 
grave, adding to memory, never subtracting from it. For me, someone new 
to the experience, it was an overwhelming symbol of how we all ought to 
think and live.
    Over the centuries, memory has been built there in Prague in a very 
deep and profound way, in the city that Hitler wanted to turn into a 
museum for what he hoped would be an extinct people. We, too, now must 
add to those stones, stones of remembrance, like this day-long 
gathering, stones that add to the memory of the victims and to our 
knowledge of the barbarism that claimed them.

[[Page 739]]

    Ultimately, I wanted to be here today after all our country has been 
through in these last days, because you have taught me that the 
vigilance of memory is our greatest defense, and I thank you all for 
that.

Note: The President spoke at 2:35 p.m. at Madison Square Garden. In his 
remarks, he referred to Foreign Minister Shimon Peres of Israel; Rabbi 
Yisrael Meir Lau, chief Rabbi of the Ashkenazic Jews of Israel; Gov. 
George E. Pataki of New York; Sheldon Silver, New York State House 
speaker; Mayor Rudolph Giuliani of New York City; and Benjamin Meed, 
president, American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, and his 
wife, Vladka.


<DOC>
[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents]
 [frwais.access.gpo.gov]


[Page 739-743]
 
Monday, May 8, 1995
 
Volume 31--Number 18
Pages 735-776
 
Week Ending Friday, May 5, 1995
 
Remarks at the World Jewish Congress Dinner in New York City

April 30, 1995

    Thank you very much. Thank you, Edgar. Foreign Minister Peres, thank 
you for being here, for your visionary leadership, your wise words. To 
all of the friends of Edgar Bronfman who are here from Canada and from 
around the world, I am profoundly honored to be with you this evening 
and to receive this wonderful Nahum Goldmann Award.
    I know he was the president of the World Jewish Congress, the World 
Zionist Organization, the Jewish Agency, Conference of Presidents of 
Major Jewish Organizations. Every group I can think of associated with 
Edgar Bronfman, except the Seagram's Group--[laughter]--we would all 
like to be president of that, thanks to the work he has done. I would 
remind you, Edgar, that I'm a relatively young man without a great deal 
of job security. I hope you will keep me in mind in the future. 
[Laughter]
    We gather--I wish you wouldn't laugh quite so much at that. 
[Laughter] We gather tonight to celebrate the accomplishments of an 
extraordinary man. For all of you, your presence here is testimony to 
your shared values, your shared goals, and to the countless lives that 
Edgar Bronfman has touched. In these years of great change and 
opportunity and of great anxiety and even fear, in years of too much 
cynicism, the Jewish community has found in Edgar Bronfman the rarest of 
combination, a leader armed with passion for his people's cause and 
endowed with the strength to act on that passion. As president of the 
World Jewish Congress and a citizen of the world, Edgar Bronfman has 
given life to Emerson's observation that an institution is the length 
and shadow of one man.
    In the long years when the Soviet Union imprisoned Jews within its 
borders, many raised their voices in anger, but Edgar journeyed to 
Moscow to win their release. When millions in Russia and all across 
Eastern Europe won their freedom from tyranny's grip, many rejoiced, but 
Edgar took the lead in helping Jewish communities reclaim their proud 
spiritual and physical heritage that many feared had been lost forever.
    And as a new era of peace dawns in the Middle East, many celebrate. 
But Edgar works every day to reconcile the people of Israel and the 
Palestinians and to bring new life to ancient lands. Wherever Jews dream 
of a better life and wherever those dreams are threatened, Edgar 
Bronfman is sure to be found.
    A week ago today, Hillary and I went to Oklahoma City to mourn with 
and pay our respects to the victims and families of the terrible bombing 
there. Last summer, Edgar undertook a similar journey of his own when he 
flew to Argentina just hours after hearing of the bombing of the Jewish 
community center in Buenos Aires. There in the midst of the rubble and 
the ruins, he called on leaders, visited the injured, spoke to the 
children, told them to stand firm against those who traffic in fear, to 
hope and not hate, but to work every day to turn that hope into reality. 
In these times, that is a lesson every citizen of every continent should 
learn and take to heart. It echoes loudest in the ears of those who have 
known so much terror and so much sorrow.
    As was said earlier today by my friend Benjamin Meed, we mark the 
time when half a century ago the most terrible chapter in the history of 
the Jewish people was brought to a close. Unfortunately, 50 years later, 
merchants of hate still live among us here at home and around the world. 
Of course, we cannot compare their actions or their capabilities to the 
horrors that were visited upon the Jewish people, but they do practice 
and they do preach violence against those who

[[Page 740]]

are of a different color, a different background, or who worship a 
different God. They do feed on fear and uncertainty. They do promote 
paranoia. In the name of freedom of speech, they have abandoned the 
responsibility that democratic freedoms impose on all of us.
    In this freest of nations, it must strike all of you as ironic that 
many of these people attack our Government and the citizens who work for 
it, who actually guarantee the freedoms that they abuse. In the name of 
building a better future they would relive the most destructive chapters 
of evil. So while we cannot compare what they are saying and doing to 
what the Jewish people suffered decades ago, we dare not underestimate 
the dangers they pose. They can certainly snuff out innocent lives and 
sow fear in our hearts. They are indifferent to the slaughter of 
children. They threaten our freedoms and our way of life, and we must 
stop them.
    Our early patriot, Samuel Adams, once said, ``If we suffer tamely a 
lawless attack upon our liberty, we encourage it and involve others in 
our doom.'' Here in America it is not only our right, it is our duty to 
stop the terror, to bring to justice the guilty, and to stand against 
the hatred, and to help others in other lands to do the same.
    Since the beginning of our administration we have taken broad and 
swift measures to fight terrorism here and abroad. We have brought to 
trial the alleged bombers of the World Trade Center, who struck at the 
heart of this city. We have actively pursued those who crossed the line 
into illegal and violent activity. We have taken strong actions against 
nations who harbor terrorists or support their bloody trade. We have 
worked to prevent acts of terror, sometimes with remarkable success. And 
in a world where open borders and new technologies make our job harder, 
we have worked closer and closer with other nations to unravel the 
networks of terror and hunt down those who threaten our people.
    But the tragedy of Oklahoma City and its aftermath have made it 
clear that we must take stronger steps. This week I asked Congress to 
approve my antiterrorism initiatives: the power to hire 1,000 new 
Federal officials in law enforcement and support to create a new 
counterterrorism center under the direction of the FBI; to authorize the 
military to use its special capabilities in incidents involving 
chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons of terror in our country. Our 
proposals would also allow us to tag materials used to make bombs so 
that suspects could be more easily traced.
    Although no one can guarantee freedom from terror, at least these 
common sense steps will help to make our people safer. So tonight I 
appeal again to Congress to pass these measures without delay.
    While we take these actions at home we must also continue and 
strengthen our fight against terror around the world. Tonight I want to 
speak to you about terrorism in the Middle East, about rogue nations who 
sponsor death in order to kill peace and what we can do further to 
contain them.
    From the beginning of my Presidency, our policy in the Middle East 
has run on two tracks--support for the peace process that reconciles 
Israel and her neighbors. I have been honored to work with Prime 
Minister Rabin and Foreign Minister Peres and their government and the 
people of Israel in that regard. And the policy of the United States has 
been the correct one, that we would never seek to impose a peace on 
Israel and her neighbors, but if Israel takes risks for peace we will be 
there to minimize those risks and maximize the chances of success. And 
we are ahead of where we were 2 years ago, and by God's grace, we will 
continue to make progress in the years ahead. I am especially proud of 

Other Popular 1995 Presidential Documents Documents:

Other Documents:

1995 Presidential Documents Records and Documents